


Princess in a Red Cape

by macneiceisms



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-04
Updated: 2017-11-04
Packaged: 2019-01-29 09:59:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12628497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/macneiceisms/pseuds/macneiceisms
Summary: Girls who ran with wolves weren't for boys to love, but Gendry did anyways, no matter how wild.





	Princess in a Red Cape

girls who run with the wolves 

aren't here for boys to love

 

the moon sings every night,

pulls the ocean's tides to shore

your heart belongs to every star

screams dance upon your lips

 

a princess should be built of

stars and suns and forevers

your mother told you fairytales

but she didn't tell you this:

 

when the sun sets and the wolves run

you will find sometimes 

the princess and the witch are one

and red riding hood will eat the wolf

 

there is fire in your blood

a forest building in your veins

don't try to lose the moonlight

you were meant for this

 

between dawn and dusk 

you were made of miracles

and you can run all you want

but in the light of the moon 

the wolves will always call you back

-([x](http://astoriamalfoys.tumblr.com/post/64900830711/a-princess-in-a-red-cape))

 

* * *

 

 _Gendry_ , someone was calling in the dark. _Gendry._ The moon above shone only in dappled specks on the overgrown trail. Everywhere the brush was green and rich, but in the dark every leaf was black. Every shadow was a killer. A cold wind blew from the North. _Gendry_ , someone whispered, closer. He turned. No one was there.

"Who's there?" he braved. The wind sighed plaintively in return. Gendry drew his dirk from his boot and followed the trail. He groped at the bark of a tree, searching for moss, and came up empty. He tried the next. No moss. There had been moss when he had started. This trail wound north into the hills. How long ago had he started walking?

A cold gust blew through his tunic. The branches above him began to groan and creak, the leaves rattling in the gloom. Was that moonlight glinting on the leaves of a bush, or a pair of eyes? He walked on, dragging his feet through the undergrowth.

The sky lit up with a flash of lightning. _Him_ , thought Gendry. His heart hammered. The helm full of teeth snarled, and flashed again. Thunder rumbled under his feet. Another seam of lightning in the sky and the Hound was gone. Gendry ran, slashing at the air with his dirk.

"I'll kill you!" Gendry shouted into the dark wood. The wind swirled around him.  _Gendry_ , someone whispered in his ear. Gendry spun, knife in hand, and found the yellow eyes of a wolf. She bared her teeth and snarled. Her canines, as long as Gendry's fingers, gleamed darkly in scattered pricks of light. He smelled blood.

"Nymeria," he whispered, lowering his knife. She snapped her teeth and lapped the blood on her muzzle. Muscles coiling beneath fur, she leaped and knocked him to the ground. Teeth pierced his shoulder. The world went white.

"Gendry!"

Long Jeyne's flour streaked face came into focus.

"Gendry you wake up now!"

Jeyne leapt backwards as Gendry shot up out of his cot panting.

“What are you here for? It's not yet dawn,” Gendry griped. The thinning quilts on his bed twisted around his legs. His body, still in the depths of sleep, refused him the strength to untangle them; he grasped around weakly but could not pull them off.

“There's been news,” Jeyne said, her voice far off.

“News that couldn't have waited until breakfast?" Gendry blinked heavily, shaking his head against the fog of sleep. His mouth felt stuffed with cotton. "What did I say about barging in?”

“That it weren't to be done.” Jeyne rolled her eyes and wiped the smudge of flour from her nose. “But I don't care. The Hangwoman's gone.”

“Lady Stoneheart?” Gendry said. He could peel his blankets off now, but his legs still felt heavy when he moved them to pull on his sheepskin breeches. The fire was low, and the smithy was cold. “What do you mean gone?”

“I mean dead.”

Gendry snorted.

“She's been dead since the wedding, or hadn't you noticed?”

“You know what I mean. Someone's put her in the river. Properly. Like a Tully. Anguy and Lem and Thoros saw it — a canoe with the Tully colors burning, floating down the Trident.”

“How do they know it's her? Could've been Lord Edmure or the Blackfish.”

“Weren't them. Lord Edmure's still in Riverrun with his wife and babe.”

“Still don't mean anything,” Gendry said, squeezing his head through his tunic and fastening his sheepskin vest.

“Lem says he saw a woman. A woman flying Tully colors, but she wore a wolfskin as a shroud. Says she had white hair, and her cheeks were torn. Says she looked like a river corpse.”

“Lem sees what he wants to see. When the Hangwoman gets back, he'll be the first one she picks.”

"If we're lucky its Lem as won't come back," Jeyne said.

"We need Lem," Gendry said dispassionately.

"Anguy's worth three of Lem."

"When will you marry the damn man and put me out of my misery?"

"Your misery?"

"Yes, mine," Gendry said. "You won't believe what torture it is to watch the two of you. Horrible."

Jeyne turned red. A line furrowed between her thick brows.

"Well he needs to ask me first, and Queen Cersei's like to become the High Septon before that happens."

"Just ask him."

"Ask..." stuttered Jeyne. "Ask him? You've gone mad. No man accepts a woman that asks him."

"I might," Gendry chuckled, but then he sobered. He busied himself with the laces of his boots to keep his face even. Who would ask him, a bastard and a blacksmith, to marry? Even smallfolk had names to pass onto their children, but Gendry would have neither a name nor children.

All at once his dream returned to him; the yellow eyes, the snarling helm flashing with the lightning, the voice whispering his name. Gendry's stomach flopped like a stone.

"You look like hell," Jeyne said, wrinkling her nose. She busied her hands inspecting his head for fever. "You aren't ill are you? You ought to wash. Sleep more."

"Can't right well sleep with you barging in before the bloody sun's even up," Gendry glared. "Can't sleep too well when I have the chance either."

"Nightmares?"

Gendry shrugged. Jeyne's hands stilled and dropped.

"If she really is gone, Gendry, who did it? And who put her to rest like that?"

"Someone who knew a thing or two about mercy," Gendry said, and stood to find his cloak.

"Breakfast is two hours off," Jeyne said when he opened the back door of the smithy, letting in a cold draft that seeped into his bones.

"Fire's out. We need wood."

"Mind the wolves," said Long Jeyne.

"Mind the children," said Gendry. He slung his axe and crossbow over his shoulder, and trekked out into the snow towards the stables.

He outfitted the mule and set off on foot with his companion lumbering stiffly behind him. Sunrise would only come within the hour, but the gray tendrils of light on the horizon reflected off the snowcapped trees and fields and made the morning brighter. Gendry followed the tracks of tiny cloven hooves through the edge of the trees.

Harwin had a thousand signs he saw when he traveled the snow and wood, but Gendry saw only gray trees and gray brush and gray snow. He couldn't tell one set of hooves from another and so he couldn't tell if there were a dozen deer, sprinting for their lives, or a few trotting calmly down the trail to the Trident.

The former meant trouble.

The former meant wolves.

When he the sun rose and hung above the horizon, he had already filled one pack full of logs, and by midday he had filled them all. With his arms sore and sweat running from his hair, he set back to the Inn. The Trident gurgled behind him.

Lady Stoneheart was not gone. Lem only saw what he wanted to see. How could he know she was gone? Gendry would come to breakfast and she would be there, ready to set off and hunt more Freys. Too many years of this. A whole winter gone by. Gendry didn't know when it would end.

He heard a twig snap in the underbrush. Halting the wood-laden mule, he drew his crossbow and bolt, scanning the trees for a trace of movement. At his left was a flash of white. He was prepared for a wolf, and loosed the bolt. It was only a white fawn, who darted quickly; the bolt lodged in the bark of a pine. She bounded off unscathed, and Gendry let out a rush of air.

"You should be more careful," he said aloud, knowing he had frightened her badly, knowing he near killed her. "You might not see spring."

"So should you," said a woman's voice.

Gendry spun, but no one was there.

"Who's there?" he called. It sounded stupid even to him to call out into the woods like that. No one replied. Of course.

 

* * *

 

 "What's that look?" Jeyne asked, the moment he opened the door.

Gendry scowled, and shaking snow off his head, silently heaved his armful of new logs beside the hearth. The heat made his frozen cheeks burn. His stomach pinched painfully at the smell of stew simmering atop the crackling coals. Had he eaten at all that day? He must have forgotten the hard bread in his bag.

"Gendry?" Jeyne repeated.

"No wolves today," he said.

"Have you finished the new latch?" she asked. Gendry sighed and shook his head. Jeyne opened her mouth to scoff.

"Gendry! You're back!"

Pate and Jon Penny barreled in, all gangly teenage limbs and too-sharp cheekbones. Gendry wrapped them both up in his arms before they could bowl him over.

"What did Long Jeyne say about running in the kitchen?"

"To not to," said Pate, rolling his eyes.

"Have you heard the news?" Jon Penny said, squirming out of Gendry's grip.

"News?"

"Hangwoman's gone."

Gendry looked up at Jeyne. Her mouth was a thin line.

"Who told you?" said Gendry.

"Harwin."

Gendry scoffed and let Pate go. "I'll have the latch done tomorrow," Gendry said to Jeyne and slipped away as the boys turned their attention to begging Jeyne for lunch.

In the forge, he built up the fire. Gendry traded his boiled wool surcoat and jerkin for a leather apron. He slipped mindlessly into the routine of heating metal to glowing, molding, cooling, heating, hammering. _The Hangwoman is gone_. Lady Stoneheart — or, once, Lady Catelyn. Arya's lady mother. _Arya._ The memory of her froze him. An old wound in his chest twisted. _They'd never have let me talk to her again_ , thought Gendry scornfully, _I would have watched her grow up to be beautiful and marry a lord. She would leave with him and bear him sons and I would never have seen her again anyways_.

A sudden thud against the closed window jerked him out of his thoughts. Gendry stormed over and opened the shutter, ready to scatter whatever creature loitering below the window.

"Jon Penny? Willow?"

No one was there. Gendry turned back to the forge.

"If they're stealin' kisses under my window again," he began to mutter, but fell silent.

In the middle of his worktable someone had pinned a crossbolt — his crossbolt, he noticed — and tied it with a rope of white and a tattered blue ribbon of velvet. He inched closer, and withdrew his knife from his boot. It wasn't rope. Gendry ran the white stands through his fingers. They were long, coarse, and brittle, but still human. The fabric was a faded blue, and had once been finely embroidered with leaping red trout.

He was torn between sagging bonelessly onto his workbench and searching the smithy, sword in hand, against whoever had put the crossbolt in the center of his table and scampered out without a word. _The Hangwoman's gone_.

"Who's there?" he called. He searched the cot and the rafters and the wood pile, then bolted the windows shut. No one in the smithy, no one in his room. He drew the dirk in his boot and stepped into the cold. No footprints from the window. Nothing at all.

Thud. Gendry whirled around, and the next moment, he was flat on the ground. A dark shape in a shadowcat cloak had him pinned to the snow.

"You," Gendry panted against the dagger at his neck. "You've been in my smithy."

"You've been in my wood," she said, her breath misting the air. Beneath all her thick skins and furs her thighs were pressed against his.

"Who are you?"

"Wenda the White Fawn," she said coldly. "Mother Mercy. Witch of the Riverlands. The Ghost of Harrenhal. You decide."

"I never did nothing to you," Gendry struggled, but she only pressed her knife harder against his neck.

"And I did everything for you," said the woman, "What do I get for keeping your oprhans safe when they wander into the woods? What do I get for robbing Queen's men and Freys and Lannisters and leaving that coin at your womans door?"

"My woman?" Gendry blinked, confused. "…Jeyne you mean?"

"Isn't she your wife?" Accusation colored her voice.

"No?" said Gendry. "Why's it matter so much to you?"

"You look different now," she said.

"Different? You know me?"

"Like a proper man," breathed the girl.

"Bugger this, let me up and let me back to my smithy. Whatever thanks you want, you have. I don't have a head for games."

"And If I refuse?" the girl asked. The prick of her cold dagger pressed the annoyance out of him. In its place settled a tendril of dread.

"Will you kill me?" said Gendry. He didn't even know what this girl looked like; all he could see were the pinpricks of light in her dark eyes.

"Depends on your last words," she said. "Pray to your Seven, or your Red God."

"Go to hell," Gendry spat. Her knife bit into this throat. He hissed, and the knife cut deeper.

"Are you sure those are the words you want to leave in this world?"

"There's no other world, so I don't much care," said Gendry. He felt blood trickle down his neck. "But if there is, I'd find the Hound and I'd kill him myself."

She raised her knife from his neck and brought it down again. A pain split his head. As the world went black, Gendry saw a pair of gray eyes in a long and solemn face.

 

* * *

 

 "You bloody idiot," said Long Jeyne when his eyes fluttered open. Her face swam, doubled, tripled, and returned to one in the dim candlelight.

"Why are you always here when I wake?" Gendry mumbled. His mouth felt full of cotton.

"Why'd I find you laying in the snow, bleeding? I thought you were dead! How many times've I asked you to take Pate w' you? Always off alone, thinking no one's gonna kill or rob big old Gendry. Oh, I'm a man, weren't no one in these woods as hurt me!"

"I suppose you think I better take Pate with me? A boy of five and ten against wolves or bandits?"

"Might have helped you this time."

"Didn't help none the others."

"Who done ya in?"

"Dunno," scowled Gendry, shifting on the lumpy mattress. His head throbbed. Years of working alongside her taught Gendry when to avoid her shrill scolding; there was no escaping her now.

"You dunno?" Jeyne threw her hands up, spilling a roll of linen bandage on the rushes.

"A girl," Gendry said. "She was wild, all bundled in furs and skins. I didn't see her face."

"I only hope she knocked some sense in to you," said Long Jenye and curtly left the room.

"She's frightened is all," said Willow, who sat on the other cot mending a torn tunic.

"My head hurts," Gendry complained, lifting his hand to find a lump on his temple. He hissed.

"I 'ent here to scold you," Willow said. "But you best not touch it. Jeyne says it's concussion."

Gendry huffed, then felt his stomach growl furiously.

"There's some bread beside you," said Willow, and Gendry carefully reached over to grab some. He winced again as the lump on his head throbbed.

"How'd you even get a girl to scramble your brains up?"

"Shut up," said Gendry, glaring at Willow, but without much conviction. She smirked.

"Men usually get knocked about when they say something untoward, but you 'ent even looked at a woman since you been here."

"I've looked at a woman," Gendry argued.

"You've looked at me or Jeyne or some village girl, but not to look, just cause they were people talkin' to you," Willow rolled her eyes. "You're five and twenty, it's 'bout time you find yourself a girl."

"What's the point? S'not as if I'll marry her."

"Don't matter. There's girls just lookin' to have a good romp and a warm bed to sleep in."

"No," said Gendry fiercely.

"Are you going to wait your whole life?" Willow snapped, growing cross.

"I won't be happy with them and they won't be happy with me. Better I'm left alone," Gendry said, looking at Willow pointedly.

"Bullheaded boy," said Willow.

She left him too; left him with a silent room, a throbbing head, an old pain in his heart. Gendry brought a hand to his temple again, feeling the hot hard lump, and then touched the place on his neck that stung. _Hells_. A girl with a knife; a girl with gray eyes. He remembered too little of his attacker, and too much of a ghost. _I should never have left her_ , he thought. A sensible voice in his head said, _you would have died right alongside her. You should have_ , said another, softer, but more insistent. Deep in the wood, a wolf howled.

Gendry drifted off to sleep, waking in the hour of the owl, then again in the hour of the wolf. His head spun every time he woke, swearing there was a dark shape moving around him every time he closed his eyes. Was it her? Was it?

The next time he woke fully, sometime after Jeyne had come in with porridge and bread, he was sure someone had been in his room. The chair by the brazier had been moved closer to his bed. Just Jeyne, or Willow, he thought. Or, her — the girl in furs.

A girl in furs, pressing him down with her legs. Gendry's face went hot. If Willow knew he was blushing because of a girl who'd near killed him, he would never hear the end of it. He refused to let his flush go lower, but against his wishes, he felt those legs on him again, thighs gripping his hips, knees against his stomach, how warm she'd been, and all the blood in his head trailed south.

Gendry groaned. Only two things could rid him of this now, and standing around in the snow until his ears froze looked like the far less appealing option. What harm was it really? It wasn't as if anyone was here to see him. No one would know he trailed his hand down his stomach, into his breeches, imagining a softer hand.

 

 

* * *

 

 

"Bloody foxes," Gendry muttered to himself, stiffly picking red stained chicken feathers from his wools as he stumbled into the forge. The hearth had never beckoned him more. There was only room for a fire and a cot and a place for his boots, but it was as close to a home as he had — he'd been in worse places than this. Besides, after crawling around inside a chicken coop for the last few hours, any room had more than enough space for him.

"Can you blame them?" said a voice behind him. "The winter's been long."

Gendry started.

"Just can't leave me alone, can you?" he scowled. Her red hood was down and a rope of dark hair spilled out of it. She grinned, or snarled. Gendry found in hard to tell in the firelight, with her face half in shadow.

"Can you blame me?"

"Yes," he said. "I don't have anything you'd want."

"Nothing?" she smiled and sauntered closer. "Not a knife? Or a helm? Or a sword?" She picked a feather out of his cloak and twirled it in her fingers before letting it fall to the rushes. A second, then a third, then a fourth. Her fingers trailed to his neck and scraped through the stubble of his jaw.

"No," said Gendry. He didn't know what she wanted, but he could bear waiting a moment longer to find out. Just another moment, he told himself. Her body was warmer than the fire, and her eyes were gray. He might have reconsidered his position on gods; if there were gods, they had taken enough notice of him to taunt him with this creature; this long-faced girl with big, solemn eyes staring up at him.

She kissed him. Her mouth tasted like acorn paste, he was overwhelmed her taste, her soft lips, the smell of unwashed hair and pine sap.

Gendry put a hand on her wrist to bring her closer. She jerked away. There was a blade pressing into his ribs before he could grasp what had happened.

"Find what you were looking for?" Gendry scowled, red faced and ashamed.

"No," she said.

"Then it's best you leave, m'lady," he said.

"I'm not a lady." The blade dug deeper, stinging through his wool tunic but Gendry didn't move away. "I'm a wolf."

He glowered at her.

"Do you want to kiss me or do you want to maim me m'lady?"

"I want," she breathed, "a bath."

Gendry blinked, and laughed.

"I'll fetch you hot water then, m'lady," shaking his head as he strode past her and towards the rusting tub to pull it next to the hearth. Gendry grabbed the full pail beside it and put it atop the hearth to warm. "I'll be...I'll be outside."

"Watch out for wolves," she said. She untied her cloak and let it fall to the ground. Underneath, mail and boiled wool. 

Gendry scoffed, "There's one in my smithy."

His feet took him out into the woods, tracing the familiar path through the snow to the bank of a stream. The mud was frozen. Gendry's lips still burned from the taste of her. He was shamed that he had kissed her, shamed that she had stopped. Did she want to kill him? Or was she only here to mock him before running off again, never to be seen again?

He returned to an empty smithy, the bathwater still warm in the tub. Gendry tentatively opened the door to his small room. It too was empty — no. He froze. On his bed lay a helm. Gendry blinked. The very same helm he had made in King's Landing; the very same helm he had carried with him on the road to Harrenhal; the very same helm Dunsen had stolen from him. _Bullheaded bastard boy_ , he remembered someone saying, a long time ago.

 

* * *

 

 

  
"Going to polish your sword again?"

Gendry started. Out of all the ways to be snuck up on, red faced with his hand in his breeches was one of the least preferable.

"Gods," he scrambled, "How long have you…"

"Been watching you?"

"Yeah," he breathed, not sure the word had even left his mouth. She stirred from the bench beside the brazier, and Gendry scrambled to lace his clothes around him.

"What do you think about?" she said.

"I…I…ah…"

She was too close, her eyes too curious. He thought of the wide-eyed gaze of the white fawn before she had leapt away from his arrow. Gendry's heart hammered in his chest.  
"I heard the girls in the village talk about you," she said. "I've seen how strong he is, I've seen him carry cords of wood, oh, imagine." She took his hand — did she notice how it trembled? — and placed it on her neck. Hot skin, soft, her pulse fluttering under the pads of his fingers. "Imagine how his hands would feel," she said, tracing his hand down, down, to a soft breast, the ridges of her ribs, the jut of her hip bone, "on your skin. Imagine him pressing you to his bed…" Her pupils drowned out the grey of her eyes. "…inside you."

"I only think about you," groaned Gendry, collapsing in the curve of her neck. If he let go of her hips he would surely vanish, fall away, and wake up in a cold cot alone. He felt his cock stiff against her stomach, every nerve on fire; he did not even have sense left to feel shame. Only her, only her. "I've only ever…thought about you."

"Show me then," she whispered into his hair. Her hands trailed from his hip to the laces of his breeches, unlacing them with deft hands.

"What are you —" he said, the flush from his face spreading down to his chest. Settling into his lap, she kissed him. Softly at first, then insistent. He gasped for a breath and moved his mouth against hers, confused but not unwilling.

"I want you," she said, so softly Gendry thought he imagined her saying it — he'd done it countless times before. "Gendry," she said, her lashes brushing his cheek. He would have let her do anything to him. Almost shyly, he ran his fingers down her arm and guided her hand.

"Oh," she breathed into his neck. Her hand wrapped around his cock was so warm it burned all the way down to his toes. His hand atop hers, she stroked down to the base, up again. She rolled her thumb over the head and he gasped, jerking his hips.

"Sorry," she said hastily. "I didn't mean to —"

"No, no. Don't stop," Gendry said. He felt like he was begging for his life. "Gods," he choked, inhaling the woodsy smell of her hair. He kissed her temple, her cheek, her nose to occupy himself while she found a slow and torturous rhythm. Shifting her in his lap, he moved his hand to her thigh, running circles with his thumb in her deerskin breeches. Would her skin there be as hot and soft as her mouth, he found himself wondering, trailing his fingers down to the crux of her legs. She shuddered and dug her hips into the heel of his hand, her mouth falling open.

"Touch me," she said, unlacing at the waist to reveal wool underclothes. She stood and dropped her breeches, and pulled Gendry atop her on his too-small cot. He had dreamed this too. Far too many times, if he admitted. Now she was here, with him, her body real and warm and solid. _And she wants me…gods, she wants me._ He flushed, but this time the nervous knot in his chest, the same old wound he had always carried, untied. Underneath him, she flushed breathlessly and dropped her gaze to his chest laid bare for her. Scars and all. He settled between her open thighs, groaning into her hair as his cock pressed against her through their smallclothes. _She wants me._ He kissed her.

"Is this what you wanted? To…to be pressed against my bed?" Gendry grinned.

"Shut up," she said.

She groaned again as he moved against her. He grazed his teeth down her neck, following the red mark he'd left with kisses. He had died, and was in hell now. Every point where her skin touched his on fire; there would be no saving him, no confession, no absolution. Arya reached between them to slide his smallclothes off his hips and take his cock in her hand again. He was content to burn.

"Have you…did you ever…think about…"

"You? Yes," she gasped, "yes," tossing her wools on the rushes below.

He let his gaze linger on her bright, dark eyes, her flushed cheeks with their dusting of freckles, her dark hair billowing across his lumpy pillow, and below her tunic, a dark knot of curls between her thighs.

"I've…" he struggled, "I've never seen anything as beautiful as you. Not even…not even dreaming." Arya turned her gaze away again, flushing. He turned her chin back and kissed her. Tracing his hand down her hips, he pulled apart the dark curls of her cunt. Wet. She was wet.

"Gendry," she whispered against his mouth, "I…"

"I think I remember something about," he said, gently pressing his fingers into her cunt, "imagining me inside you." She fluttered around him and gasped, a deep, strangled sound.

"Shut up," she said. "Are you going to leave me imagining or not?"

He laughed, kissing the sweat pooling at her collarbone. She pulled his fingers out and stroked his cock against her slick folds. Gendry's laugh died in a desperate groan. He could not muster up shame over his need to feel her, hot and wet around him, her sinewy legs enveloping him.

"Arya," said Gendry. Her eyes snapped up to meet his. "Arya…I…"

She pushed his sweaty mop of black hair from his face and pulled him in for a kiss.

"I know, Gendry...please."

Any small wish of teasing her longer vanished. He pushed his cock inside her, clutching her to his chest, her nails leaving half-moon dents in his back. She cried out into his mouth. Heart hammering, he lay still above her, inside her, consumed. He waited. A moment, then another. Tentatively, he rocked his hips. She cried again, and he froze.

"Are you…am I…"

"Stupid," Arya breathed, "For stopping." She raised her hips to meet his, sinking his cock deep inside her again. This time Gendry gave her a strangled groan, and Arya laughed.

 

* * *

 

 

"Stay," he whispered into her hair, afraid that if he spoke any louder she would shy and run and never return. She stilled.

"I can't," she said.

"Why not?" he said. He tried to keep his voice as even as hers but it came out hoarse.

"I have to go home, to Winterfell."

"Then I'll go with you," said Gendry.

"I-" she began to say.

"You won't convince me otherwise. You won't be alone. Even when you marry some lord, I'll stay." Gendry had made up his mind ten years before she'd ever kissed him.

"You're wrong," she said. "I won't marry some stupid lord."

"But —" he said, scarcely daring to hope.

"You'll be stuck with me as long as I live, and after, whatever it is," swore Arya.

"You swear it?" he whispered.

"By the old gods and the new, I won't leave you here alone," said Arya.

 


End file.
